Praise the Dead

by Gina Ranalli

  “I . . .” Lindy was too overwhelmed to think very fast. “I’m tired, I guess.”

  “Well, I hope you have enough energy for dinner. I thought I’d make eggplant parmesan. How’s that sound?”

  “Good.”

  “Okay. Maybe you should take a little nap before dinner?”

  She nodded. “I think I will.”

  “Or . . . is something else bothering you? Did something happen at school today?”

  “No,” Lindy replied quickly. “Just pooped out from, um, gym class.”

  “Oh?”

  “We played basketball.”

  At least that part was true.

  “Huh.” Her mother looked skeptical, but luckily didn’t push it. “Well, I’ll come back when dinner is ready. You just relax for a while.”

  “Okay, Mom.” Then, softly, “Thanks.”

  Once her mother was gone, Lindy went to her bed and sprawled on top of the comforter. She stared at the ceiling, feeling weary down to her bones, but knowing there was still no way she would be able to sleep.

  Instead, she listened to the wind, glad that at least it was not speaking to her.

  Chapter Nine

  The teenage boy groaned, his face in the dirt.

  Andrew felt positively giddy with excitement. He stood up and stepped back. “Rise!” he commanded, having once seen a mad scientist say the same thing to his living experiment in an old movie on the tube. “Rise!”

  Right on cue, the teenager stirred, struggling to sit up. It took him a few tries before he was clambering to his knees, swaying, milky-blue eyes rolling in their sockets.

  “You can do it,” Andrew told him. “Get up. Come on, get up!”

  Since he had not thought to check the teenager’s wallet, he had no idea what to call the creature. He quickly decided on Frank, after the Frankenstein movie he’d seen.

  “Let’s go, Frank. Up!”

  He wondered if Frank felt as high as he did.

  Grinning, he shouted, “High on life!”

  Frank turned his head, looked directly at him, and moaned loudly. In actuality, he sounded miserable, but Andrew didn’t care about that. As he watched the creature finally make it into a standing position, he already knew he would never be satisfied with raising dead animals ever again.

  This.

  This is what was meant to be. What the plan had been all along.

  Taking a wobbly step towards Andrew, Frank reached out a hand and growled, baring his teeth. It was nothing Andrew wasn’t used to. The animals had often growled or hissed at him when he’d first resurrected them. Some had even attempted to bite him, but he hadn’t thought much of that either. They were only dumb animals, after all.

  But Frank was human. Andrew could talk to him, reason with him. Frank was just a little scared and confused right now; he didn’t realize the gift he had been given.

  “Settle down, boy.” Andrew tried to make his voice as soothing as possible, a method he had been using for years to get the animals to come to him in the first place. It hadn’t worked as well on the animals once they’d been brought back from the dead, but again, they were only animals, with a limited understanding of the world around them.

  Frank advanced.

  Though he was nervous, Andrew still couldn’t wipe the smile off his face. There was only one other person in the entire history of humanity who could do what he had just done. No one else in over two thousand years. He just wasn’t completely sure of what type of power he was drawing from. He wished others could be here to witness this moment.

  “How do you feel?” he asked Frank, easily dancing out of the undead boy’s reach. “Sorry about stabbing you, but you were going to run away. That would have been bad.”

  Frank did not seem particularly forgiving. He roared at Andrew, taking a swipe at him.

  Andrew’s smile wavered as he backed out of Frank’s reach. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Maggie’s corpse. “Oh, okay. No problem. I can bring your girlfriend back, too. I bet you’d like that, right?”

  Frank gave no indication he understood at all. Didn’t even glance in Maggie’s direction. His focus remained on Andrew as he snarled, his enraged eyes following the young boy’s every move.

  Feeling the first twinges of anger, Andrew said, “You’d better knock it off. I have to go home soon, so I don’t have time for your temper tantrum.”

  When Frank came at him again, Andrew held his ground, fists clenched at his sides. He didn’t want to hit him, but he would if he had to. The teenager obviously needed to know who was boss around here.

  “I mean it,” Andrew warned, but Frank remained unfazed. He tried to grab him, but the boy stepped aside and punched the teenager in the side as hard as he could, just underneath the ribs.

  Frank gave absolutely no indication he’d even felt the blow; he snatched Andrew’s arm and pulled the boy forward.

  “No!” Andrew shouted as he tried to wrench himself free. “Bad!”

  To his horror, Frank yanked his arm up to his face, his jaws snapping.

  He was trying to bite him!

  The realization hit him like a sledgehammer. He screeched, thrashing and twisting with abandon, a small terrified animal caught in a trap.

  It was his size that saved him. Despite the vise grip that Frank had on his forearm, Andrew was able to spin his entire body away from him, twisting Frank’s arm in an impossible direction, forcing him to let go.

  Howling with rage, Frank tried to grab him again, but it was too late. The instant he was free, Andrew took off through the darkening woods, praying he wouldn’t trip, wouldn’t fall, wouldn’t scream. Twigs snapped beneath his pounding sneakers in time with his panicked heart, and in his head, a mantra accompanied him the entire way home: Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.

  Chapter Ten

  Jackson Reynolds had been watching the girl for five years now. He’d been dreaming about her for nine of them—since her birth.

  Why, he didn’t know exactly. But the dreams had told him everything else. Everything he’d needed to find her. Snapshots of the war they would face together.

  And apart.

  Sighing, Jackson punched buttons on the remote control, scanning the channels without even registering what he was seeing. The TV was muted anyway. It was just something to look at besides the dirty white walls of his rented room while he lay on the bed on top of the covers, head propped on a thin, dingy pillow against the head board. Through the thin wall behind him came the sounds of people having violent sex. This wasn’t unusual. The building was infested with druggies, whores and every other form of deviant known to man.

  Jackson didn’t mind. He was only here because it was cheap and kept him out of the rain and wind and snow. He had more important things to worry about than what breed of lowlife lived next door. It didn’t matter anyway. He knew they would all be toast before long. Or, more specifically, they’d be lunch, and not to anything that enjoyed toast.

  Carnivores.

  Zombies.

  His mind went back to Lindy, wondering how much the poor kid knew for sure. The thought sent a chill up his spine.

  The girl sent a chill up his spine.

  So much like Cassie when she’d been that age. Shy, withdrawn, sensitive.

  The memory of his daughter did was it always did: sucker punched him in the gut, knocking the breath out of him, making him feel queasy, dizzy and heartsick. Even after all this time.

  He fantasized for the millionth time about finding the person who’d slaughtered his family, fantasized being alone with the scumbag for an hour. One single hour. Oh, what he’d be able to do to the piece of crap in such a small piece of time. Jackson was sure that when he was finished, there would be nothing even remotely resembling a human being left.

  The woman next door let out a deafening screech, snapping him out of his thoughts and wondering if perhaps she was being murdered rather than having a good time.

  Either way, he was grateful for the reprieve
from his dark fantasy. He knew he shouldn’t dwell on revenge, shouldn’t wallow in the past. There was nothing in those thoughts that could do him any good now. They would only poison his heart, drive him insane and render him unable to function on the present and the future, both of which needed his mind intact.

  On the other hand, there was nothing he could do about the war tonight. Tonight, he was a free man, with nothing but time on his hands, and he knew just how to fill it.

  He reached into the nightstand drawer and pulled out a pint of Chivas Regal. Licking his lips as he regarded the bottle, he debated going down to the communal kitchen to see if there was a clean glass and maybe some ice in the freezer.

  But the truth was, he was comfortable right where here, despite his loud neighbors, and besides, he could crank the volume on the TV and drown them out.

  And the booze would do a great job drowning out everything else. It always did. Never mind the glass, then. Never mind the ice.

  He ran a hand over his balding, gray head and set his plans for the evening in motion. With enough alcohol, he wouldn’t dream about Lindy, Cassie, or even his wife Sheila and, with any luck, he would wake up like a newborn, with no memories and no knowledge of the storm growing like a cancer on the black horizon.

  Chapter Eleven

  Andrew was never able to return to the shed in the woods. The girl’s body had been found a few days later by an elderly man walking his dog and the police had also discovered the grisly scene inside the shed. Her boyfriend—it turned out his name was Jake and not Frank—was immediately suspected and then discovered roaming around downtown, bloody and pale— “clearly on drugs,” was what the news people said—and trying to attack random strangers.

  When Jake hadn’t responded to police ordering him to lay flat on the ground—had ignored them completely, in fact—the cops had had no choice but to “fatally” shoot the youth.

  Later, everyone had scratched their heads in wonderment at the stab wounds on the kid’s back, and the medical examiner in particular was baffled by Jake’s body temp and condition, which both pointed to him having been dead much longer than could have been possible, not to mention the stab wounds should certainly have been fatal, and there was no trace of drugs in Jake’s system.

  Everyone chalked it up to being an odd anomaly and forgot about it a week or so later.

  Everyone, that was, except Andrew. He’d spent that week in frozen terror, certain the authorities would be pounding on his door at any second to haul him away for murder. By watching crime dramas on television, he knew they could check for fingerprints, shoe impressions, DNA. It didn’t occur to him that, since he wasn’t in the system, even if they’d found such things, it would still be impossible to trace them back to him.

  Once the fear of being caught subsided, he began to concentrate on what had gone wrong with his experiment. He’d been unable to control Frank/Jake. Why? In theory, a human should have been able to understand him.

  It was harder than any math problem he’d ever encountered at school and he assumed he would have to do another experiment to figure it out.

  Unfortunately, the opportunity for his second experiment didn’t come for another two years, but when it finally did, it couldn’t have been a happier occasion for him.

  His mother, however, felt the complete opposite.

  Walter, Andrew’s stepfather, died suddenly in his sleep, presumably from a heart attack.

  Andrew learned of Walter’s passing when he awoke just after midnight to the sound of his mom crying and shouting Walter’s name.

  Concerned only for his mother, he slipped out of his bed and crept down the hall towards their bedroom. He tapped on the door, without really expecting a response, so he wasn’t surprised when he didn’t receive one.

  He waited a moment before turning the knob and poking his head around the door into the dim room.

  His mother knelt on the bed in her flimsy white nightgown, shaking her husband and dripping fat tears onto his hairy bare chest.

  “Wake up!” she sobbed. “Walter! Wake up!”

  Andrew pushed the door open, stepped into the room and stopped at the foot of the bed. At eleven, he was more than just a little acquainted with the sight of death and he could tell there was absolutely no way Walter would ever be waking up again.

  Though he fought the urge to smile, his heart soared with glee. No more having to take orders from this phony bologna who only pretended to like him when it was convenient for him. No more pretending to like him back for his mother’s sake.

  “He’s gone, Mom,” Andrew told her, trying desperately not to sound happy about it.

  She looked up, noticing him for the first time, stringy hair hanging in her face. Right away he noted her dilated pupils and waxy completion.

  “No,” she said and wiped snot away from her nose with her wrist. “He can’t be.”

  He saw no sense in arguing with her. “Do you want me to call 911?”

  His mother’s eyes widened at the question. “No!” She reached out a shaky hand towards him. “No, we can’t do that.”

  “Why not?” He knew the answer, of course, but he wanted to watch her squirm and see what excuse she would come up with.

  “We have to wait,” she said. Evidently, she was finished crying. Her eyes nervously scanned the bedroom and settled on an album sleeve on top of the dresser. Andrew followed her gaze and saw the tiny white mountains, along with a short skinny straw and a dusty white razorblade.

  He smirked at the drug paraphernalia then looked back at his mom.

  “We can’t,” she said again.

  Because she was high. Because Walter had also been high.

  Andrew wondered if his mother was scared the cops would blame her for Walter’s death and send her to jail. And if so, was she worried about her son? Worried he would be left alone? Or only thinking of herself and how she would never survive in prison?

  Eyes narrowing, Andrew immediately suspected the latter.

  “How long should we wait?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I . . . I have to think. Can you let me think for a minute?”

  “Sure, Mom,” he said, ignoring her snappish tone.

  He watched as she carefully climbed off the bed, and used her jittery hands to try and smooth down her hair. She stood before the dresser mirror, studying her gaunt features. She began to cry again. “How could this have happened? What did I do to deserve this?”

  Andrew wasn’t sure what to make of the question. The answer seemed so obvious to him. But, he said nothing.

  “I’ll make coffee,” his mother said suddenly. “That’s a start, right?”

  He didn’t know if it was a start or not and remained silent. What did coffee have to do with this? His mother pushed by him and left the room, presumably heading for the kitchen.

  Once she was gone, Andrew went to Walter’s side of the bed and stood staring at his corpse. He knew he could solve his mother’s problems, could take away her grief.

  And even beyond those things, most of all, it would be fun.

  Andrew tilted his head like a curious puppy. To Walter, he said, “I’m gonna be the boss now.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The man was following her again.

  Lindy had long ago grown accustomed to his presence and now believed he meant her no harm.

  The birds had told her as much.

  They also warned her not to tell her mother or any other adult about Jackson. They were very clear on the matter, insisting the consequences would be dire and irreversible.

  She trusted the birds, and more importantly, they didn’t make her as sick anymore. At least not when they came to her in small flocks of three or four, though she preferred only one at a time. More than four, though, and she could feel the headache coming on, the nausea roiling in her belly.

  Occasionally, Jackson would approach her, his eyes watery and red as if he’d been crying, which had alarmed her until she caught the whiff of alcohol waftin
g about him like a green noxious cloud.

  Lindy wondered if it was his past or future that made him drink, though she suspected it was a bit of both.

  Walking down to the convenience store, change jingling in the pockets of her shorts, she sensed Jackson lingering a block behind her. She ignored him, concentrating instead on keeping her hair out of her face. It was a windy afternoon—heading towards five o’clock—and in process of deciding what to make for dinner, her mom had discovered that they had no spaghetti sauce and asked Lindy if she wouldn’t mind walking the five blocks to the store to pick up a jar.

  Lindy didn’t mind. It gave her time to think without her mother quizzing her every second about what she was thinking.

  She arrived at the store and picked up the sauce without incident but when she came back out, Jackson was leaning against the side of the building by the payphone, a toothpick jutting out from between his cracked lips.

  “Hi,” he said sheepishly.

  Lindy paused and averted her gaze. “Hi.” She switched the paper bag she carried from one hand to the other and continued walking.

  He walked beside her. “Windy day, eh?”

  She nodded, watching her feet.

  “I had another dream last night,” he told her. “I think it’s an important one.”

  “I don’t want to hear about it.”